Driving My Mercedes To Italy – Land Ho!

Red box indicates location of the Duesseldorf Express on June 4 (Vesselfinder)

PUNTA DELGADA, The Azores

Exciting news!

The container ship carrying my Mercedes 450 SL to Italy has just entered European waters.

The ship, the Duesseldorf Express, has been off the standard tracking devices for nearly two weeks, since it left Cartagena, Colombia, to cross the Atlantic Ocean en route to Lisbon, Portugal. (I’m certain its owner, Hapag-Lloyd, knew where it was at all times.)

The journey started May 13 in the Port of Los Angeles, where the container with my Mercedes in it was loaded onto the ship. So far, there have been stops in Manzanillo, Mexico; the Panama Canal; Colombia and the Dominican Republic.

The ship is due in Lisbon at 09:00 on Tuesday, but it looks like the 3,500-mile crossing was a speedier one than expected. As I kept track of the weather in Atlantic the past week, conditions seemed absolutely ideal the whole way. (Note: The Atlantic Hurricane season officially started June 1!)

That allays many fears I had about the Mercedes being jostled about too much inside the container during what can often be a tempestuous crossing.

We’ll see tomorrow whether the ship will arrive earlier than expected in Lisbon.

Its schedule calls for stops Wednesday in Tangiers, Friday in Valencia, Spain; Sunday in Cagliari on the island of Sardinia; Monday in Livorno, on Italy’s Tuscan coast, before arriving in Genoa the next day.

That’s where I hope to a) locate it, b) clear it to leave the port with me, and c) start it. (It was last started in April.)

It’s a 1973 model, and its a little temperamental after so many years on the road. Like its owner.